Step 3: Film Galaxies – First Working Version!

Posted by admin in Uncategorized on November 3, 2008

Here is the first, extremely buggy version of the movie visualization project I have been working on.

Actor – Movie Visualizer

You can click and drag to move around, scroll the mouse wheel to zoom in, and click on an actor to see his/her worst and best reviewed movies, biggest blockbuster, biggest flop, and most cult-ish movie.  The Cult-ishness is calculated by looking at the difference in scores between users and critics.

KEY:

  • Size of the Cube = Number of Film’s Where the person has had a pivotal role (director/writer/main actor) Samuel L. Jackson and Robert DeNiro are both Hulking Giants, with ~40 movies under their belts
  • Color of the Cube = Monetization value of the person (the greener the cube, the more green their movies make on average) Look at how Green Sam Raimi is in the directors image, thats cause Spideyman makes the big bucks
  • Height of the Cube = Average Critic’s score of all movies this person has been credited with. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is practically in the stratosphere compared to other actors.
  • Distance of Cube from central Axis = This is a tough one, Amount of disagreement between Critics and casual reviewers. Critics seem to hate Christopher Walken’s movies, but the people give him love, thats why he’s so far towards the edge.
  • Length and Direction of Arrow = Direction and amount of disagreement between critics and casual reviewers. Usually casual reviewers are nicer, but that niceness cant overpower critics’ love for Richard Linklater, of ‘Waking Life’ Fame.

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Step 2: Still Frames of Movie Data Visualization

Posted by admin in projects on October 27, 2008

More progress on the movie visualization project, here are some still frames from the “Movie Galaxy” graph. Read the key at the bottom for explanation.

Actors:

Directors:

Writers:

These “galaxies” chart a number of statistics for each of the most prolific Actors, Writers, and Directors in Hollywood.

  • Size of the Cube = Number of Film’s Where the person has had a pivotal role (director/writer/main actor) Samuel L. Jackson and Robert DeNiro are both Hulking Giants, with ~40 movies under their belts
  • Color of the Cube = Monetization value of the person (the greener the cube, the more green their movies make on average) Look at how Green Sam Raimi is in the directors image, thats cause Spideyman makes the big bucks
  • Height of the Cube = Average Critic’s score of all movies this person has been credited with. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is practically in the stratosphere compared to other actors.
  • Distance of Cube from central Axis = This is a tough one, Amount of disagreement between Critics and casual reviewers. Critics seem to hate Christopher Walken’s movies, but the people give him love, thats why he’s so far towards the edge.
  • Length and Direction of Arrow = Direction and amount of disagreement between critics and casual reviewers. Usually casual reviewers are nicer, but that niceness cant overpower critics’ love for Richard Linklater, of ‘Waking Life’ Fame.

Stay tuned… More (including interactive graphs!!) to come soon.

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Coming Soon at Google: Conflicts of Interest

Posted by admin in internet on October 25, 2008

Google is going to have some major conflicts of interest pretty soon. They recently released a new web browser, Google Chrome, and will soon have to decide between doing no evil, and losing major profits. 

Chrome is open-source, just like Firefox, meaning that anyone can see exactly how it works, and anyone will soon be able to create add-ons for Chrome to make it better.  Thats when Google will have to make a big decision:

What will Google do when someone creates an Add-On for Chrome that removes Ads?

 Google makes ALL of its quarterly net income of $1.3 billion on Ads in Search Result pages, and more and more on Ads on webpages all over the web.    Currently, one of the coolest extensions for Firefox is AdBlock Plus, is assuredly putting a dent in Google’s numbers.  This amazing little add-on instantly removes all those annoying ads from webpages, resulting in quicker load times, and literally zero distracting banner ads.  This is the third most popular add-on for Firefox, and it had been downloaded 27,452,360 times at the time of this posting!!  Imagine all the people not clicking on Google Ads thanks to this Add-On.

Google has recently made changes to Youtube, Google Maps,  iGoogle, and AdSense that all attempt to serve more Ads, and squeeze more money out of each of their properties.  So what will Google do when someone creates an Add-On that makes all of Google’s revenue sources literally disappear for a User!?

As a side note, it would be interesting to know how much Google loses each year thanks to AdBlock Plus, it has to be more than the $110 Million that it loses yearly thanks to the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on its homepage, as Valleywag reported last year.

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Yelp London, Yelp Paris, Yelp UK Where are You?!

Posted by admin in internet on October 20, 2008

 

When will Yelp expand into Paris and London? How complicated can that be? Yelp London and Yelp Paris need to happen pronto. If you look at the Quantcast demographics for Yelp, its exactly the group of people that would be most likely to travel to Europe, research their trip online, and use internet reviews for hotel, restaurant, and nightlife recommendations once they arrive as well.

Quantcast – Yelp Demographics

 

A Yelp London could easily get a nice kickstart from its growing, supremely loyal, US user base.

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Beginnings of a new Project: Movie Data Analysis

Posted by admin in projects on October 20, 2008


Recently I have been working on a fun personal project.  I am gathering an incredible amount of data on Movies, especially relating to how they are reviewed by Critics, how they are reviewed by Users, and how well they end up doing, among other things.

I just finished gathering a huge amount of data around ~4500 mainstream movies, and already am having some fun with it.

For Example: Guess which actor has appeared in at least 5 movies that average a whopping 87.4 out of 100 in all reviews by all newspapers and publications?

This Guy:

John Ratzenberger

John Ratzenberger

From Wikipedia:

He is perhaps best known for his role as Clifford C. ‘Cliff’ Clavin, Jr. in the classic sitcom Cheers (1982) and appearing in all Pixar feature length films.

And even more interestingly:

All of Pixar’s feature films include Ratzenberger, who has become something of a “good luck charm” to the studio (and, according to Andrew Stanton, Pixar actually has a rule stating that Ratzenberger must be in all Pixar films).

Pixar got that right, this guy’s movies average a whopping 32.4 points above the global average.

Guess who the next highest reviewed Actor is? Here is a hint: He was a long time friend of Al Pacino, and only starred in 5 Feature Films.

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Bus Stop Logic Question

Posted by admin in life on October 15, 2008

Here’s a semi-interesting logic question for ya:

Every evening after work, I cross the street from my building, go into the Westlake Mall in Seattle, (that place is a freakshow, by the way,) and enter the Seattle Bus tunnel through the basement floor of the mall. After walking through a couple long halls, I ascend a stair case and voila, I am at my bus stop.

First, some details:

  1. My bus comes every ten minutes, but there are no set times for when it gets to my platform.
  2. I can’t see whether or not my bus is coming until I am at the platform (this will be important later)

Here’s the Question:

Will running to the bus stop increase, decrease, or not change my average wait time?

Think about it for a second…

I would say running will not change my average wait time.  It would seem to some that running would reduce the chance of just missing a bus, but I disagree.  While running to the bus stop may result in a more toned lower-body, wait times will remain the same.  Because, all I am doing is changing the time I show up at the stop. When the bus arrives is still completely unknown.

Obviously, I have a long bus ride.

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Scrabulous is Gone!

Posted by admin in Uncategorized on September 28, 2008

UPDATE 2:September 29, 2008 – Scrabulous is over at Lexulous.com – It looks like, in order to distance itself from Scrabble even further, the creators renamed it.

  • Login Still Works
  • Statistics from Scrabulous are all there
  • My crappy rating is still the same

    • Play Scrabble at Lexulous.com!!!!

    UPDATE:September 28, 2008 – I just noticed that this Google Cached Page of Scrabulous indicates that just before it went to the GoDaddy landing page, it was down for maintenance, meaning hopefully its just down for some extended maintenance.

    Scrabulous.com now results in a GoDaddy landing page!!!!

    I can’t believe this, Scrabulous has had its share of downtime, but a GoDaddy Landing page means either:

    1. They forgot to Renew their domain name, which doesn’t seem to be the case judging from this whois information.
    2. Their GoDaddy Account was hacked, by some selfish bastard who wanted to deprive millions of wholesome scrabble games. doubtful
    3. They are moving Servers, and decided to give scrabble fanatics worldwide a scare by not telling anyone.
    4. They finally got some sort of serious lawsuit or takedown notice from Hasbro, like in the Facebook Scrabulous Scandal

    Ahhh I hope its not number 4!!! (Although my rating on scrabulous could benefit from a fresh start.)

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Address Bar Spamming – Leech Visits off Big Websites

Posted by admin in internet on September 22, 2008

Now obviously I’m not a Spammer, but sometimes I see things when I am working, that make me go:

“Dang! If I was a spammer I would totally do that!”

The newest releases of Firefox and Internet Explorer feature smarter Address Bars, that use your web history to “predict” what URL you are trying to type, and the closest matches pop up. (see below)

If you are thinking about buying a domain, and want people coming back to your site often, get a URL that begins in the same way as a popular site’s URL.

For Example:

  • Googly-eyed.com
  • Amazomatic-toys.com
  • NYTimsBlog.com
  • wwwidgets.com – (This one will come up when people start typing www… into the address bar)

Now, once someone has visited your site once, every time they navigate to the website that your site is similar too, they will be reminded of your site in the pop-up!

This phenomenon actually bugs me so much sometimes that I have to clear my Browser History to get rid of it, WWTDD.com is a Celebrity Gossip site, and any time I start typing ww…. into the address bar, Firefox suggests I waste some time and head over to WWTDD instead of doing my work!

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Lets Play: Find the PC at CPB (Agency behind MS “I’m a PC” Campaign)

Posted by admin in internet on September 22, 2008

CPB makes a great Microsoft Ad, the problem is they use Macs: props if you can find a PC in these photos, I found one!

Crispin Porter + Bogusky is the famous/notorious Ad Agency behind Microsoft’s huge new Ad Campaign. They came up with the not so well received Gates + Seinfeld Ads, as well as the new “I’m a PC” Ads that just hit the airwaves, and are getting much better reactions. (Video Below)

The new Ad effectively paints Apple as elitist, (Apple’s Ads certainly don’t help this image either).

Images Credit: IHaveAnIdea.org

Further Reading:

TechCrunch: “Huh. Those Mac Ads Aren’t As Funny Any More.“

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Ego-Searching – 5 Tools to Monitor your Name Online

Posted by admin in internet on September 22, 2008


Ego-Searching: Typing your name in on Google to see what kind of stuff comes up, lets be honest everyone does it; some companies have made even made a business out of capitalizing on the millions of searches like this every day.  But with the right resources, you can go beyond just Google, and really dig deep into your own presence on the web!

 

5. Monitor your name with Google Alerts:
Have Google notify you via email every time they find a new page with your name on it.  This way when that person you met drops your name on their livejournal you are actually the first to hear about it, dont worry if its bad, no one reads people’’s livejournals anyways.

4. See How Many Times Your Name is Searched on Google:
Are you one of those people that possesses the double-edged sword of a Unique Name?  See how many people search for you on Google with the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Type in your name, fill in the CAPTCHA, and make sure you select “Exact” in the “Match Type” Dropdown.

(If you’re not famous like me, you may get “insufficient data”, but anyone with any sort of web reputation gets a significant amount of searches. “Michael Arrington”, for example, gets 2,900 searches a month.)

3. Verify your Professional Info with ZoomInfo:
ZoomInfo scrapes all sorts of sites that Google may not hit, and aggregates data about your career history.  Search for your name here and make sure their web-crawlers didn’t pick up on the fact that you were a night manager at the Lusty Lady back in 1985.

2. Snoop on Hipsters with Twitter Search:
Twitter is a “micro-blogging” site that allows its hipster users to post 140 character updates, many of which can be shared publicly.  Although it is still used by only a small portion of the internet world, Twitter’s audience and media attention is growing quickly.  Snoop on people’s posts with the Twitter search engine:

1. Scan the Social Web with Friendfeed Search:
Another new social media overload service out there is friendfeed, which “aims to be a one stop shop for all your social networking updates and news items.”  Basically, it aggregates everything its members do on sites like facebook, twitter, youtube, etc…

WIKIPEDIA BONUS:
Want to see how many people look at a wikipedia page?  Use this Wikipedia Article Traffic Statistics tool to see how many people check out any page on Wikipedia. The numbers aren’t exactly encouraging, just as many people look at the XENA: Warrior Princess page, as the World War II page.

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